Before he was the Silver Fox, before he was the namesake of a baserunning rule, before he gave Philadelphia its first World Series trophy in a generation, Chase Utley was a UCLA Bruin.

He didn’t have to be. UCLA did not offer Utley his only path to playing baseball beyond his late teens. The Dodgers drafted him in the second round out of Long Beach Poly in 1997.

Then, as now, second-round picks will receive every chance to succeed in professional baseball. Utley’s path to the majors was laid out before him. He didn’t have much room to move up in the draft by playing a few more years of college ball.

Unlike now, signing bonuses for draft picks in 1997 weren’t constrained by a web of rules designed to enhance competitive balance. The first “draft bonus pools” were still 15 years away. The Dodgers could have made Utley a multimillionaire overnight without fear of being taxed by MLB, or sacrificing money for their other draft picks.

The college path did not choose Utley as much as he chose it.

“It was a double whammy when he was drafted in the second round by his favorite team, but I didn’t give up,” said Gary Adams, UCLA’s head coach from 1975-2004. “I was desperately looking late in the year for a guy to replace Chase in case he signed (with the Dodgers). I was over in a Fullerton summer league looking for a good shortstop/second base prospect. In the middle of that game, I went to a payphone and called Chase to see what he was thinking. His dad was on the phone and said, ‘The Dodgers are here now talking to Chase, call us back in a couple hours.’”

Adams called back. Utley delivered the good news himself.

A UCLA shirt, as shown by second baseman Chase Utley, will be offered Friday when the Dodgers host the Cincinnati Reds. (Photo courtesy of the Dodgers)

“I had a difficult decision to make,” Utley said. “The way I looked at it at the time, I couldn’t go wrong either way. I wanted to enjoy college, have the college experience, especially the college years age-wise. If baseball was meant to be, I’d have an opportunity to play beyond college.

“I’m happy with my decision. I had some great years at UCLA. I’m happy how it turned out.”

This kind of win-win scenario is not common. Few 19-year-old baseball players possess Utley’s raw talent paired with his work ethic. Even for those who do, NCAA baseball scholarships are scarce. This is a legitimate barrier for athletes from low-income backgrounds.

If professional baseball wanted to make itself even more attractive to high school prospects, it just wasted a great chance.

A class-action lawsuit, originally filed in 2014, alleged Major League Baseball violated federal minimum wage and overtime standards because some minor league players earn as little as $1,100 per month. The suit effectively died in March, when Congress signed an omnibus spending bill into law. Buried in its pages was the “Save America’s Pastime Act,” which explicitly codified minor league players as seasonal employees exempt from federal wage laws.

According to the Washington Post, Major League Baseball spent more than two years lobbying Congress to pass the bill. MLB should have used its resources to forge a compromise with the player-litigators, ideally involving the MLB Players’ Association, to raise the pay floor for all minor leaguers. Now it’s a moot point.

The law merely codifies the status quo, so the net effect on college baseball might be neutral. The same forces that have always impelled talented high schoolers toward college remain; only the slim hope of better wages in the minor leagues is gone.

That hope was more widespread than you might think. The draft lasts 40 rounds. After Round 10, the majority of players will not receive a six-figure signing bonus. Many will take off-season jobs to make ends meet. In-season, it’s a different experience than college – one that doesn’t fit into a glossy brochure.

That’s a useful recruiting tool for Division I coaches, said Teddy Cahill, who covers college baseball for Baseball America.

“They do use the college experience against the idea of riding buses and playing in front of small crowds in the middle of nowhere,” Cahill explained via email. “That’s especially true at big schools that have big-time baseball environments (read: the SEC and top-tier programs in Power 5 conferences). Those schools also have facilities that exceed the low minors in a lot of cases, and robust nutritional and analytic programs as well.”

At UCLA, Adams said his players received a larger per diem than some minor leaguers.

“It wasn’t (a selling point) that I always brought up, but it was one that I did use in the desperation phase of my recruiting,” he said.

Adams recounted tales of players who were married as minor leaguers, then got divorced when their wives could no longer tolerate the lifestyle.

“The only thing I consistently said, every time I went to the living room to talk to the parents, was this: In all my years coaching, I never heard one of my players say to me that they regretted coming to UCLA,” Adams said. “Although, I signed players with letters of intent and they went on to play professional baseball, and I did have a high percentage of those players tell me they wish they would’ve gone to UCLA instead of sign.”

Utley could adorn the cover of the UCLA baseball brochure. By waiting three years to turn pro, he might have actually extended his career. At 39, he’s in the first year of a two-year contract with the Dodgers.

Utley would make an excellent coach or recruiter someday, though he said he hasn’t contemplated his post-retirement options. For now, his career is testimony enough.

“I was one of 12-ish, 13, 14 incoming freshmen when I came in in the fall of ’97,” he said. “It was a great group of guys from all over the country, not just Southern California. Took a little bit of time to get to know each other and get on the same page. We felt extremely connected.

“There’s a lot of learning experiences, not just for me but the other freshmen my first year.”

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